Sir Charles Mordaunt
(1836-1897)
18 April 1861
Volume 3, page 112, sitting number 3137.
Born on 28 April 1836, Sir Charles Mordaunt was the son of Sir John Mordaunt, 9th Baronet, and Caroline Sophia Murray. He inherited his father’s baronetcy in 1845. To mark his coming of age he commissioned, for the enormous sum of £30,000, Sir George Gilbert Scott to rebuild the family home, Walton Hall, in exuberant Gothic style. From 1859 to 1868 he was the Conservative MP for South Warwickshire.
On 6 December 1861 he married Harriett Sarah Moncreiffe, daughter of the Scottish baronet Sir Thomas Moncreiffe and Lady Louisa Hay-Drummond.
Sir Charles was a stolid country squire with no interests beyond hunting and shooting, and Harriet was a giddy young beauty who had already caught the eye of the Prince of Wales. Harriet had license, or thought she did, to carry on affairs with other men. While Sir Charles killed foxes, deer, grouse, and salmon, or sat in Parliament, Harriet entertained numerous lovers, including the Prince and several of his aristocratic friends. In 1869 she gave birth to a blind daughter, Violet. Convinced that the baby’s affliction was the result of a venereal disease, Harriet confessed everything to her enraged husband.
Sir Charles immediately sued for divorce, threatening to name the Prince of Wales as a co-respondent. Harriet's father, who had several other daughters to marry off, announced that she was mad in order to prevent a divorce trial and save the family reputation. Harriet was incarcerated in various rented houses, and after some weeks either broke down or agreed to feign madness: smashing plates, eating coal, howling and crawling. The case was brought to court and the Prince of Wales was called as a witness; he admitted visiting Lady Mordaunt but nothing further was proved.
In 1875 Sir Charles sued again. Viscount Cole (later 4th Earl of Enniskillen), the father of Harriet's child, pled guilty to adultery with her and Sir Charles got his divorce. Harriet was kept in asylums for the rest of her life. However, her daughter Violet, sight restored, married the future Marquess of Bath.
On 24 April 1878 Sir Charles married, secondly, Mary Louisa Cholmondeley, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Reverend the Honourable Henry Pitt Cholmondeley and the Honourable Mary Leigh. The couple appear on the 1881 census living with their two young daughters at Walton Hall, a Neo-Gothic mansion Sir Charles had commissioned from Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1858 to replace the sixteenth-century family seat at Walton near Wellesbourne in Warwickshire. Also present on the night of census were twelve servants, including two footmen, with more servants living in properties on the estate.
Sir Charles Mordaunt died, aged 61, on 15 October 1897 at the Coburg Hotel, Grosvenor Square, London. He left an estate valued at £377,264. He was buried in St James's Churchyard, Walton.
[From an album probably compiled by either George Charles Pratt (1799-1866), 2nd Marquess Camden or by his son, John Charles Pratt (1840-1872), from 1866 3rd Marquess Camden.]